| Author |
Message |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 213
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 2:03 pm: |     |
Melissa, that thought crossed my mind, but I really suspect someone was pulling Marcussen's leg. His reference to the blonde, blue-eyed man is not a direct reference to but is somewhat reminscent of EGW's handsome young man who guided her later dreams. The whole thing just sounds too much like a somewhat disaffected former with a healthy dose of cynicism toward Marcussen. The letter is turning Marcussen's message back on him.
Colleen |
Leigh
Registered user
Username: Leigh
Post Number: 83
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 2:06 pm: | |
They always want to say that
protestants who worship on Sunday are on the side of Rome. I heard this at home growing up and at school and of course in the Great Controversy.
Yesterday in church one of the elders preached because our pastor is out of town. He talked about his leaving the Catholic church. He said the Catholic church sent a psychologist to see him to find out why he left. He said the Catholics were concerned that so many have left the church and have gone to nondenominational churches. The elder gave his testimony to the psychologist and witnessed about his new found relationship with Jesus. The psychologist listened, took notes, but didn't "hear." His heart was not open to the gospel.
The catholics and sdas are more alike than they think.
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Praisegod
Registered user
Username: Praisegod
Post Number: 46
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 2:19 pm: | |
Melissa, I got my letter off to Focus on the Family yesterday before church. In fact, I double dosed it by sending an e-mail and receiving a control number. Then I printed the letter out, included the control number and faxed it off to them also.
I offered to provide the name, phone number, address and full information but did not give it initially. Rather than naming names as it wanders up through the chain, I prefered to wait until someone more senior contacts me.
When I hear something, I'll be glad to post it here. It was laid out with several bullet points of concerns so I believe it should be clear enough.
Praise God... |
Freeatlast
Registered user
Username: Freeatlast
Post Number: 168
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 5:41 pm: | |
Darn those dirty rotten filthy stinking Jesuits and Masons, always picking on "God's 6,000-year-old SDA Church"... ;>) |
Pheeki
Registered user
Username: Pheeki
Post Number: 307
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 8:27 am: | |
Darn those blue eyed Arian types...always masquerading as angels of light!!! |
Loneviking
Registered user
Username: Loneviking
Post Number: 240
Registered: 7-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 2:02 pm: | |
Hey! I resemble that description! You mean I'm not an angel of light?  |
Derrell
Registered user
Username: Derrell
Post Number: 28
Registered: 10-2002
| | Posted on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 7:38 pm: | |
In Jan's letter, he goes on to say,
"This letter to the right from a poor man from the Roman Catholic OFS gives you a hint why the demon possesed fiends haven't touched you, or Sweet Vennita, or me."
Re abortion: "This program to kill over one million babies each year in America by abortion is no accident. It was planned in harmony with the Jesuit oath. The Jesuit Jim Jones also tricked those hundreds of Protestants to kill themselves for the same reason. At the same time, Rome has tricked the government into giving federal money, in various ways, to large poor Catholic families around the nation, whom they are encouraging to get larger and larger." (reference to Mexican families. He has talked about this before.)
I was amused at the reference to Jim Jones. The church that he left in Los Angeles was purchased by the SDA church and is now called "L.A. Central Spanish." I will be speaking there on Sabbath, May 15, and no matter how dry my throat gets, I will not drink their killer Jesuit Kool Aid.
Derrell |
Praisegod
Registered user
Username: Praisegod
Post Number: 53
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 - 8:53 pm: | |
Here is the e-mail I received today from Focus on the Family. Even though I offered to provide name, address and phone number for this conference and evangelist, I guess they arenít terribly concerned. Thoughts?
Dear Mrs. Ö,
Thank you for writing Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family (e-mail, May 2, 2004). I can assure you that the Doctor would have preferred to send a personal reply if only circumstances had permitted. Unfortunately, with several thousand pieces of mail arriving at Focus headquarters every day, itís rare that he is able to become directly involved with ministry-related correspondence. Iím sure you can understand why he has asked me to respond on his behalf. Itís a pleasure to serve you as his representative.
It was good of you to come to us directly for verification of the letter attributed to Dr. Dobson by the pastor of your local Seventh Day Adventist church. Focus on the Family has no record of any such correspondence. But records aside, it is safe to say that the Doctor could never have composed a letter promoting the idea that Ellen G. White ěis the only true modern day prophet.î Such a statement would be inconsistent with his personal beliefs as a fourth-generation member of the Church of the Nazarene and his role as Founder and Chairman of a broad-based, interdenominational evangelical Christian ministry.
Let me just add that Dr. Dobson has great respect for many of the people he has met who are associated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Nevertheless, there are specific points at which he does not agree with their theological perspective. In the area of food, for example, Dr. Dobson does not feel bound by Old Testament law. He feels no more obligated to avoid certain foods than to stone a rebellious child or offer two turtle doves and two pigeons as an atonement for sin. In his opinion, such laws were meant for a time prior to Jesusí advent and do not apply to us today. These may be minor differences, but they should be sufficient to demonstrate that the Doctor would never even think of issuing a promotional statement of the type you referred to on behalf of Adventism.
We hope this reply has been helpful, Mrs. Ö.. Thanks again for alerting us to this situation and for caring enough to set the record straight. Donít hesitate to let us know if we can be of any further assistance. God bless you.
Timothy Masters
Focus on the Family
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Melissa
Registered user
Username: Melissa
Post Number: 317
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 7:16 am: | |
At least you know they read your email and addressed your specific issue...that's better than some form letter.
Maybe you could pass the reply on to the evangelist yourself ... if nothing else, he can't say he didn't know he was mis-leading people. |
Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 529
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, May 16, 2004 - 6:10 pm: | |
In reference to Pastor Jan and his Sweet Venita: It's got to be the money. A sucker is born every minute and I believe this applies to those who purchase his Sunday-law book. Let's do the math. How many millions does he claim to have sold at around 35 cents per copy? He's made oodles from this and it's really tragic. In my neighborhood is a lady who identifies herseld as one of those Historical Adventists, otherwise known as those Hysterical Adventists. This lady is living on government welfare and eats at the foodline for the homeless all the while passing out Pastor Jan's Sunday-law book to anyone who will take one. I see them in the trash cans around town (it's a small town). She leaves them at the post office on the tables and in the laundrymats. It's very sad. She has not been inside the local SDA church in years because of all the Jesuit infilterators that run the church and because praise music is hypnotic and is from Satan to hyptnoise God's true people into following The Pope. It's way weird.
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Hoytster
Registered user
Username: Hoytster
Post Number: 76
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 8:12 am: | |
Is it correct, that EGW identified the national Sunday law as a prerequisite for Jesus' return? If that is correct, then shouldn't SDAs be *demanding* a Sunday law? Are they not preventing the return of Christ by lobbying again the Sunday law? |
Ladylittle
Registered user
Username: Ladylittle
Post Number: 9
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 9:12 am: | |
If the fear of 'the time of trouble' is over your head constantly, you would not want to rush it unless you had a very close walk with Jesus that gave you reason to want to get through it and on to Him I would think. |
Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 535
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 1:52 pm: | |
When I was a kid I asked my mom that very question, Hoytster. I was told that The Great Commission is that the true followers of God need to get the Sabbath truth out to all the world first and then the Sunday laws will be instituted. Somehow they ALWAYS get around giving an answer consistant with anything from Scripture. Hoytster, I tried that and it didn't work. |
Melissa
Registered user
Username: Melissa
Post Number: 320
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Monday, May 17, 2004 - 2:50 pm: | |
B also had a hard time when I asked him how he handled the scriptures that said we were to be people waiting looking for the Lord, yet his were looking for the Sunday-law. He hesitated, and then said he thought people were looking for Christ. They just expected the Sunday-law first. And, I also tried that question Hoytster. There were no bites on that one either. |
Hoytster
Registered user
Username: Hoytster
Post Number: 77
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 8:45 am: | |
I'm sure the SDAs have an answer to this, but I'm curious as to what it is. The Jews have the same problem, I guess.
If the sabbath starts and ends at dusk, then how does it work above the arctic circle, when dusk occurs, then there is (depending on latitude) four months of night? If the initial dusk was on a Tuesday, is there no sabbath that year? If the initial dusk is on a Friday, do they keep sabbath for four months, until the next dusk? Or do they have to wait four months and a few days, for the first dusk that occurs on a *Saturday*?
Silly, I guess, but surely EGW had an answer. Perhaps they revert to 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM, as EGW's visions dictated for a decade or so, before God sent her a revised vision specifying dusk. (???!!!)
There are a zillion puzzles in SDA, but the one that confounds me most, is why would God only offer salvation to this tiny minority? SDA as the remnant church: it's not only incredibly arrogant, it's also demeaning to God, to say that his love and his salvation is meted out to so few, that he is so stingy with his amazing grace.
- Hoytster |
Chris
Registered user
Username: Chris
Post Number: 330
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 1:08 pm: | |
Hoyster said, "Silly, I guess, but surely EGW had an answer. Perhaps they revert to 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM, as EGW's visions dictated for a decade or so, before God sent her a revised vision specifying dusk. (???!!!)"
Chris: You are correct Hoyster! That is exactly what they do. I asked a good friend of mine who lived in Alaska how they handled that and she said it was 6:00 pm to 6:00 pm.
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Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 543
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 6:16 pm: | |
Yes, there was an article in the Review several years ago answering this question as some SDA's were relocating from the Mainland to Alaska and wrote in asking how/when to observe Sabbath up there and the answer was from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. the next night. Wow, Hoytster, you are catching on real fast! You'll be ready for your SDA preaching degree from Andrews in no time at all! Maybe at 6:00 p.m. (I'm playing with you, but you are learning the goofyness of SDA'ism real fast.) |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 238
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 8:02 pm: | |
The specialness of remnant status seems so heady and awesome and privileged, but it gets a tad bit confusing (or perhaps competitive) when one realizes that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses teach exactly the same thing. They are the only true church(es)! One must do a lot of mental gymnastics to verify one's privileged status as one compares Adventism with the other true churches! (Actually, don't the Catholics also teach they are the only true church? H-m-m-m--it just makes you wonder!)
Colleen |
Doc
Registered user
Username: Doc
Post Number: 76
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 11:34 pm: | |
Roman Catholics certainly consider themselves the one true church. So do Christadelphians and Oneness Pentecostals. I believe there are hundreds of them out there. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a cult.
Adrian |
Debbie
Registered user
Username: Debbie
Post Number: 46
Registered: 7-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 7:06 am: | |
Except in the Roman Catholic church, it seems the only ones who feel "heady" or "privileged" are the higher ups.
I still remember the article in the newspaper last year or the year before on Good Friday (on the front page mind you), quoting the Pope as saying that he wanted to remind his parishioners not only that they should not take communion with non-Catholics, but also that if they have ever been divorced they need to remember that they cannot take communion AT ALL--and there were NO exceptions given--and NO mention of Jesus or the reason for Easter or anything.
(Oh and by the way "Happy Easter to you too!!!")
In my own experience, most lay Catholics don't feel anymore superior than the average "heathen" who doesn't think he needs to go to church at all. The ones who really care about their eternal destiny don't seem to proud or heady at all to me. But that's just my opinion.
The leaders of the Catholic church...Now that's a different story. Talk about pompous and heady. Sometimes you can just cut it with a knife.
That's what makes ME angry about the Catholic church, and what made me angry about the newspaper article. I believe there are a lot of sincere people in the catholic church (or raised Catholic) who are truly seeking or who would really be open to God's forgiveness, but oftentimes the leadership, because it is attempting to play God, and because of its focus on judgment instead of mercy, is in effect, I believe, making many people feel like they are past the point of forgiveness (like, for example, those who are divorced).
Debbie |
Susan_2
Registered user
Username: Susan_2
Post Number: 545
Registered: 11-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 - 1:39 pm: | |
The local diocee in my area has a policy of not refusing Communion to ANYONE who is worshiping at a Catholic service in that diocee. I asked one of the local sisters if this diocee was going against the mandate of the greater Catholic church. I was told they are but the local preists, brothers, sisters, boards of directors, church counsils, etc. held a meeting and were led through study and prayer that if the greater Catholic church is teaching against the word of God and the locals have been shown this error then the locals are beholden to God to do what they know is right, not to the power structure that lives way over in Rome. Then the sister told me I was always welcome to attend the local Catholic church and partisipate in Communion as a fellow believer. As with the Lutherans, though they do believe the Communion partisipatent needs to have been already bapitized. This particular sister is getting ready to retire and upon retirement plans to move back to Ireland to be near her family. It's for sure my community will greatly miss her. While I'm at it, how come the SDA church lets anyone, weather ever having been bapited or not, take part in Communion? I have alwayws wondered that. Generally it is understood within Christianity a person first is bapitized and later after that will be elidgable to partake in Communion. But, in the SDA church bapitism doesn't hold as a prerecresite to Communion. Someone please explain. |
Debbie
Registered user
Username: Debbie
Post Number: 47
Registered: 7-2000
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 11:09 am: | |
Susan_2
Regarding the local diocee in your area:
It is always so good to hear about churches that are following God's word and leading rather than man's. May God Bless them!
Debbie |
Hoytster
Registered user
Username: Hoytster
Post Number: 80
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, May 20, 2004 - 11:57 am: | |
John Kennedy made a remark about the 1960 presidential election that I've often found helpful to my understanding. He was a Catholic when that was a controversial thing for a presidential aspirant, with (Protestant) people wondering "What will he do, what the Pope tells him or what's best for the American people?"
Kennedy dealt with it (among other ways) by emphasizing his close relations with the parish priests, and his disdain for the Catholic top hierarchy. He used words to the effect "Those bishops with their fancy clothes and their limos are all Republicans. My constituents are the priests dealing with people at the parishes, who know how tough it is, who sympathize with the lives of ordinary Americans. That's who I sympathize with, too. I don't want the support of the Catholic leadership; I have the support of the parish priest and the parishioners."
Which was just short of telling the Pope to go take a long walk on a short pier (a 60's witticism).
I think the tendency holds true today. That is why lay Catholics (not the leadership) are very similar to Protestants in their support for abortion rights ( 42% of Catholics supporting the right to an abortion, compared to 38% of Protestants, in one 1993 study: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/socio/kuechler/309/ab-po93.html ). They are distinctly different from their leadership.
The Methodist church, by the way, welcomes everyone to the communion alter, regardless of their denomination or baptismal status. I love communion; it makes me feel very close to God, and very grateful for his love and forgiveness.
- Hoytster |
